17 amazing Kickass Torrents alternatives in 2024
Looking for viable Kickass Torrents alternatives in 2024 can be a tough task sometimes. Just when you’ve found a pretty great alternative, it can get shut down a few weeks later, and your search starts all over again.
And it’s quite understandable that you grew to love Kickass Torrents (aka KAT) so much. After all, it became the #1 torrent site in the world by the end of 2014, overtaking the torrenting giant The Pirate Bay.
According to Wikipedia, Kickass Torrents was serving up to 1,000,000 users per day by August 2015. It had an insane amount of torrenters, both uploaders and downloaders, and provided users with pretty much everything they needed in terms of movies, TV shows, music, software, games, and much more.
All of that changed in July 2016, when the Kickass Torrents domain was seized by the US government and the alleged owner, Artem Vaulin, was arrested.
We go over the story and development of Kickass Torrents below in greater detail, but at this point, Kickass fans simply want to know: what are the best Kickass Torrents alternatives that are still working in 2024?
Luckily, we’ve gone over that for you, so that you can get back to finding and downloading torrents quickly and easily.
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Even better, not only have we found the best Kickass Torrents alternatives, we also went ahead and divided them into different categories. These include Kickass Torrents alternatives for:
- general torrenting
- movie and TV torrenting
- game torrents
We’re constantly updating these lists so that you can have the most up-to-date information on the best Kickass Torrents alternatives available in 2024.
So let’s get started by looking at the best general torrenting sites you should be using today.
7 best Kickass Torrents alternatives for general torrenting
The Pirate Bay
First on the list of any great Kickass Torrents alternatives is the ever-popular Pirate Bay, which by itself gets shut down or blocked from time to time by various governments around the world.
Luckily, so far, its story is a bit more positive than that of KAT.
The Pirate Bay presents a pretty great alternative to Kickass Torrents simply based on the fact that it’s one of the most popular torrenting sites on the planet. For this reason, there is a lot of activity, with users uploading and download (seeding and leeching) torrents almost continuously.
Based on that, you’ll be able to find a lot of variety in the type of torrents you can download from the site. Similarly, you’ll also find pretty good seeder-to-leecher ratios, helping to contribute to some speedy downloads.
No matter what you’re looking for in a torrenting site, chances are that you’ll be able to find it with The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, this site is blocked in a few countries, including the UK, Sweden, Australia and Ireland.
If you’re located in one of the 28 countries where at least one ISP is blocking The Pirate Bay, you can either:
- find another Kickass Torrent alternative in this article
- use a virtual private network (VPN) to bypass those blocks, which we discuss in more detail further below
RARBG
Another old school (circa 2008) torrent site, RARBG is well-known for having a consistent wide range of high-quality torrents for you to download. Therefore, it’s most often cited as one of the top Kickass Torrents alternatives.
While having come up around the same time as the popular The Pirate Bay, RARBG still doesn’t offer the same wide variety of torrents. Similarly, for some particularly popular torrent files, the seeder number is quite lower than you’d expect.
Nonetheless, you will still most likely find what you’re looking for in this site. It’s also a huge plus that RARBG’s site is easy to navigate and download.
Compared to the amount of countries blocking The Pirate Bay, however, RARBG provides more accessibility. Only 9 countries have current ISP blocks in place for RARBG, including the UK, Denmark, Ireland and Portugal.
1337x
Far from the best looking of the Kickass Torrents alternatives, 1337x is still a pretty good choice when you want to find and download torrent files with ease.
Don’t let the dark and dated design of the website scare you away. The torrents are nicely organized into categories. When you get to the actual download page for a particular torrent file, you’ll find the useful pieces of information like the amount of seeders, leechers, upload age, etc.
When looking at what countries allow or block users from visiting the 1337x torrent site, we see that it’s only blocked in Australia, Ireland, the UK and Austria. That’s pretty good compared to The Pirate Bay’s 28 blocked locations.
iDope
iDope is a pretty good Kickass Torrents alternative that has a minimal design style. In fact, when you land on the homepage, you’ll be reminded of Google’s search page.
The site seems to have quite a range of quality torrents, with a pretty good seeder-to-leecher ratio depending on the popularity of the file you’re trying to download. The site also has a slightly different system of downloading torrents: instead of being able to download the torrent file, you only seem to be able to get the magnet link.
Nonetheless, the site is clean and offers a good experience—if you know exactly what you’re looking for.
As far as we know, iDope isn’t blocked in any countries (yet).
TorrentsGroup
TorrentsGroup may look like an unappealing alternative to Kickass Torrents. However, we should avoid judging this book by its cover.
The reason why the design can seem so funky is that they try to cover as much of the space with their torrent files. That way, if you’re simply browsing the site looking for something new or interesting, we’re sure you’ll be able to stumble onto something you’ll like.
The site can be misleading at times, however. For example, if you click on the button named ‘Download utorrent’, you’ll end up on a sign in page. To simply get the actual file, you’ll have to click on the ‘Download magnet link’ button.
Similar to iDope, TorrentsGroup doesn’t seem to be blocked in any countries, although the site does suffer from outages and hosting problems from time to time.
LimeTorrents
Another torrenting giant from the old days, LimeTorrents is consistent in offering a wide variety of torrents for you to download. Based on the most recent numbers, there are an estimated 10 million torrents available on the site.
The variety and depth of torrent files on LimeTorrents is pretty amazing, making this truly one of the best Kickass Torrents alternatives available on the internet. It’s also good that, for such an oldie, it’s still operational.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had its fair share of problems. At this moment, LimeTorrents is blocked in the UK, Australia and France. Similarly, it also has its own problems with domains and hosting.
That’s why, sometimes, it can be difficult to remember what top-level domain you need to use to get to the site: .cc, .info, .site, or .something else.
MagnetDL
Last, and certainly least, of the top Kickass Torrents alternatives is MagnetDL, a torrent site with a similarly minimal design aesthetic as iDope.
Of course, once you get past that first page and you enter in your search term, you’ll get the standard torrent search results page. One thing about this site, however: there just aren’t that many varied results for popular torrent files.
That can hint at a lack of availability of torrent files, which is a big problem if you’re looking to fill the Kickass Torrents gap. The site also has lower speeds than the other big Kickass Torrents alternatives listed on this site.
At least, that’s what we discovered when we looked at the best torrent sites still working in 2024.
At the moment, MagnetDL doesn’t seem to be blocked by any countries.
5 best Kickass Torrents alternatives for movie & TV torrents
YTS
YTS is known as the best source for downloading YIFY movie torrents. If you don’t know what YIFY is, it’s a popular uploader of high-definition movies with smaller file sizes.
Usually there are two options for YIFY movies: 720p and 1080p, with the first coming in at less than 1GB, and the latter with a file size of less than 2GB.
YTS is perhaps the best-looking site on this list of Kickass Torrents alternatives. While it offers on movie torrents, they are pretty well organized. Not only do you get the two file options, but you also get to see the IMDB score, critics rating and audience rating.
It provides a nice summary and you even get to see user comments about the quality of the movie, both in terms of plot and the technical details of the file.
YTS may be blocked in the UK, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore and other countries.
EZTV
If you’re looking for the newest TV show torrent files (both by episode or by season), EZTV is usually the first name you hear. That’s why it’s one of the top Kickass Torrents alternatives, especially if you’re only interested in TV shows.
Immediately when you land on the page, you’ll notice that it’s not the most attractive of torrent sites. Nonetheless, the sheer width and breadth of TV show torrent files available makes this site very special.
In addition, you’ll also see some pretty good speeds from the torrent files, seeing as the site is pretty active and the files have good seeder-to-leecher ratios.
Unfortunately, the site does have its own small problems depending on the country you’re in. At the moment, it’s blocked in 10 countries, including (as always) the UK and Australia, as well as Turkey, Norway and the Netherlands.
Watchsomuch
One less popular torrent site that is perhaps the best of the Kickass Torrents alternatives for movie downloads is WatchSoMuch.
This site looks like your standard fare for downloading torrent files, with a bit more advanced filtering system.
However, it’s their attention to detail that impressed us so much. Instead of having separate torrent files for different versions of a video (as is standard with The Pirate Bay, RARBG, etc.), they’ve gone ahead and put all different versions on the same download page for you to choose.
It’s similar to what YTS does, except with much more options. And, the further down you go, the more options you’ll find. To illustrate this, this is what you get when you look at the download options for the popular 2017 movie, IT:
When we chose the HD version of the movie, we get more options to choose the download method (magnet or torrent file), plus the added bonus of the subtitle file:
This kind of organization and attention to detail really make this site stand out as one of the best Kickass Torrents alternatives for movies and TV shows.
MKVCage
MkvCage is a movie torrent site that can serve as one of the top alternatives to Kickass Torrents—if you’re looking specifically for movies and TV shows.
As the name of the site suggests, all the movie or TV show torrent files will be formatted in .mkv, so make sure you have a media player that can work with that (such as VLC Media Player).
Also, there are many smart TVs that won’t play .mkv (preferring instead .mp4), so make sure you know which format your TV supports.
Having said that, they regularly update their site with the latest TV shows and movies. They also logically break down the categories into quality (1080p, 720p, 480p), type of rip (DVDRip, DVDSCR, BluRay, etc.) and many other types.
Torrent King
By the looks of it, this is a copy-and-paste job of YTS’ website. There are a few small differences though, as YTS has YIFY files, whereas Torrent King doesn’t seem to have YIFY files.
Nonetheless, it still promises pretty much the same thing: high-quality video files in small sizes. Just like YTS, you can alphabetically sort the files or choose a combination of the desired rating, genre, quality, year, etc.
This seems to be a very good alternative to YTS, although we’d prefer to go with that site over Torrent King, since YTS has more of an established community built around it.
5 best Kickass Torrents alternatives for game torrents
TorrentsGames
If you’re looking for some of the best Kickass Torrents alternatives when it comes to gaming, you’ll be hard pressed to find any other torrenting sites that can top TorrentsGames.
As you can probably tell from the name of the site, they focus specifically on gaming torrents. One advantage of this site is that they don’t just the most recent torrent files. Instead, they treat it more like a blog or news website, where the homepage is curated by featuring the most interesting or popular torrent game downloads of the moment.
The site is also organized by gaming system, so you can search for PC games, PlayStation, XBox 360, etc.
GazelleGames
GazelleGames can definitely be included as one of the top gaming Kickass Torrents alternatives, seeing as it caters so well to that particular audience.
However, there is one little caveat: there’s a registration process in order to access all the games. It’s a small step, but one that will be well worth it. Once you’ve registered to the site, you’ll be able to freely access GazelleGames’ more than 60,000 game torrents.
Download Games Torrents
Similar in style (and name) to TorrentsGames above, Download Games Torrents (such a straightforward name) gives you a pretty well-curated list of games you can download.
Of course, you can browse through or search for the specific files that you want. But, as is the case with the previous gaming torrents site, you can also easily stumble upon some great gaming torrents if you’re not looking for anything in particular.
FitGirl Repacks
If you’re looking for something that is definitely curated, you won’t go wrong by choosing FitGirl Repacks.
The gist of it is this: this “FitGirl” chooses what games to compress (not crack), and she doesn’t really like to take requests. Therefore, you’ll only be getting gaming torrents that she’s decided to repack, rather than getting the newest or most popular.
However, it’s quite likely that the games compressed by FitGirl are ones that are newly available. Still, you’re probably not going to get the absolute newest games from the site—but you’ll definitely get some good, high quality ones.
CroTorrents
We can easily claim this site as one of the top Kickass Torrents alternatives—if you’re looking for game torrents, and more specifically, if you’re looking for PC game torrents.
With that, you’ll probably find exactly what you’re looking for, seeing as CroTorrents has a lot narrower field to fill.
And with a good amount of torrents available on the site, even compared to other gaming torrent sites listed here, you won’t walk away disappointed.
Full story of the fall of Kickass Torrents
As we mentioned above, Kickass Torrents has gone through a lot since its inception in 2008. By November 2014, it was the #1 visited BitTorrent directory in the world.
It was thought to be different from The Pirate Bay since it claimed to comply with DMCA notices to help remove any content that is infringing on the copyrights of content owners.
The beginning of their troubles
But even before then, in 2011, Kickass Torrents’ troubles started with the US government, after its Department of Justice seized its original domain and they had to move their website to a Philippines domain.
In early 2013, several ISPs in the UK blocked Kickass Torrents due to copyright infringement. Up to the time it was taken offline in 2016, the torrent site moved to domains from the following countries:
- The US
- The Philippines
- Tonga
- Somalia
- The Isle of Man
- Costa Rica
They even added a .onion domain from the official Tor network.
The seizure and arrest
On July 20, 2016, the US Department of Justice seized their last domain (.cr) and claimed that the owner of Kickass Torrents was a Ukrainian named Artem Vaulin.
Visitors looking for the torrent site were instead met with this image:
Vaulin was soon after detained in Poland and charged with four counts of criminal indictment, including:
- copyright infringement
- conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the torrent site
IP addresses exposed by Apple and Facebook
It was soon discovered that Vaulin’s identification and subsequent arrest came after investigators cross-referenced an IP address he used for a transaction on his iTunes account (with address [email protected]) with the IP address he used to log into their official Facebook page.
In their court filing [pdf] the investigators claimed as much, stating:
“Records provided by Apple showed that [email protected] conducted an iTunes transaction using IP Address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP Address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook Account. Then, on or about December 9, 2015, [email protected] used IP Address 78.108.181.81 to conduct another iTunes transaction. The same IP Address was logged as accessing the KAT Facebook Account on or about December 4, 2015.”
Because of this, there was some backlash against Apple and Facebook for helping to expose his identity.
Kickass Torrents in 2018
Currently, Vaulin is still fighting extradition to the United States, where he can be charged on those four criminal counts.
According to Vaulin’s lawyer, there is no basis for extradition, since the crimes that Vaulin is being accused of are neither a crime in Poland (where he is being detained) nor in Ukraine, where he resides.
Furthermore, it’s been argued that since Kickass Torrents doesn’t store the files on its own servers (that’s not how torrenting works), there is no actual copyright protection for simply providing file instructions and addresses.
Nonetheless, Vaulin’s arrest and Kickass Torrents’ shutdown has caused fear in the torrenting community, leading popular torrent sites like Torrentz to voluntarily shut down.
Protect yourself while downloading torrents
At this point, it may come as a natural conclusion that you need to be safe while you’re downloading torrents.
We highly recommend anyone involved in torrenting popular files make sure they’re fully secure by using a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs help to hide your true IP by making websites (and other prying eyes) believe that you’re actually in another location.
For example, if you live in Berlin, you can use a VPN service to connect to a server in Mexico. Now, to any entity watching, it seems that you’re in Mexico.
From that point, you can safely browse websites or download torrent files, seeing as your true IP address, and therefore your real location, is hidden. After all, that’s the way that Vaulin was first apprehended: his true IP address was exposed on separate occasions.
We’ve reviewed a lot of VPNs here at VPNpro, and we’ve even looked in-depth at the best VPNs for torrenting. We very highly recommend you use a VPN so that you can be sure you’re downloading files safely and securely.
In that way, you can be calm and enjoy all your new movies, TV shows, and games in peace.
